‘NO,’ HE SAID, the word pressed against her lips, the word he should have uttered years before.
He pulled back, looking down at Mason, her eyes shining with confusion as bright as any star in the Ter’harn night sky above them. And then, reading her thoughts, he watched her belief that he’d meant ‘no’ to the kiss enter her eyes and she turned away. She scanned the garden around them, as if looking for witnesses or escape, he wasn’t sure which.
‘We’re not doing this any more.’
‘No, of course not,’ she said, pulling out of his embrace, her fingers flying to her mouth as if to brush away, or seal in the kiss they’d shared, he couldn’t be sure. But one thing he did know was that she had completely misunderstood him.
He shook his head, as the sudden realisation and renewed determination had shocked him to the point of speechlessness. Instead, he grabbed her wrist and started leading her through the palace gardens.
‘Where are we going?’ she called to him, jogging to keep up with his determined strides.
‘Somewhere we can finally talk.’
* * *
Mason could still taste him on her tongue, feel him on her lips and skin, his firm hands moulding the length of her leg, the feel of him pressed against her core... Her body was wracked with tiny little tremors, but that was nothing compared to her heart.
Somewhere we can finally talk.
Danyl’s words repeated in her mind on a loop, and she started to pull back against the hold he had on her wrist, her body doing what her mouth couldn’t. She realised she was shaking her head.
‘Danyl, don’t. I can’t...’
‘You walked away from me once, Mason. I’m not letting it happen again. Not until we’ve dealt with the past. Haven’t you felt it?’ He stopped short, turned and she almost ran into his chest again. ‘Haven’t you felt it? That anchor pulling you back, making it almost impossible to move forward?’ He looked at her intently, as if trying to see if she felt what he did, and Mason was terrified of what he would see there in her eyes. Of course she had, she wanted to scream. How on earth were they supposed to move on? she wanted to know. Even after all these years. He gave a short, sharp nod, and resumed his march around the outside of the palace.
With his free hand he plucked his phone from his pocket and barked unintelligible orders into the mouthpiece. All the while Mason’s mind and chest were a swirl of fear and confusion, guilt and grief. Didn’t he realise that she’d walked away to protect him? That she’d done what she needed to that night so that he could have a life, a future that wasn’t lost in pain and grief?
And if there was a small voice reminding her gently that she’d also done it to protect herself, she refused to acknowledge it.
They arrived at a tarmacked circle, on which sat a small, sleek, black-as-night helicopter. A man in a jumpsuit moved from beside it, only the glowing high-vis stripes across the suit allowing Mason to pick him out in the dark.
He ran to Danyl, said a few words, cast one look at Mason, clearly too well trained to allow any signs of surprise, and left.
‘What’s going on? What are we...?’ Danyl had ignored her, and instead pulled her still by her wrist up to the open door to the helicopter.
‘Get in,’ he commanded.
‘Danyl!’
‘Get in,’ he repeated, his tone as dark as the night around him, and Mason knew that there’d be no arguing now.
There had been glimpses of this autocratic persona when she’d known him ten years ago, but it had always been softened by an almost amused, self-aware arrogance. The Danyl she’d seen presented in the papers, on the day she’d first met the Winners’ Circle, and at the race meets ever since...this Danyl...was a different beast altogether. Once again guilt rose, poked and prodded. You did this, her internal beating stick whispered to her. You did this to him.
He guided her to the handle at the roof of the helicopter and she pulled herself into the seat. She might have managed it with more dignity in a pair of jeans and flat boots, but heels and a crystal-lined dress made it slightly more difficult. She could feel Danyl restrain the urge to just push her into the seat from her backside.
He slammed the door behind her, walked around the front and got into the pilot’s seat.
‘You...you fly?’ she said, her voice expressing the disbelief she felt to her core.
‘Of course. I’m a prince.’ The sentence said so many times ten years before was now void of all that had made it a shared joke between them.
He gestured for her to put on the headset as he began flicking at buttons, checking the various monitors around the small cockpit, if it was even called a cockpit in a helicopter—Mason honestly had no idea. She automatically ducked slightly in her seat when the rotor blades started up above her.
Within minutes they were jerking up off the ground, up, up and up. With her stomach left about fifty feet below them, Mason’s hands gripped the armrests of the seat, her knuckles white. It took another ten minutes for her to begin to relax, unable and unwilling to speak to Danyl in case she distracted him. She could no longer tell if the air between them was vibrating with tension, frustration or just the engine of the helicopter.
Loosening the grip she had on the armrests, and prising her eyes open, she began to look out of the smooth curved windows. She couldn’t help the gasp that fell from her lips as she looked out across the night-covered country. Little dots of lights, gathered like sequinned silk, outlined small towns and villages. With the palace behind them, she could just make out the thick velvet blanket of the sea in the distance. No light penetrated there, and for a second she wondered if Danyl would just take them out there and keep going.
She was surprised to see a stretch of mountains far off to the left, and it reminded her of home. Her gaze stuck to them as if she could draw from them the peace that she usually only felt in the Hudson Valley, until she felt the little helicopter dip.
Beneath her Mason could see the lights of the helicopter pad, guiding Danyl down to a surprisingly gentle landing. She waited in the seat for Danyl to say something, but as soon as the chopper was switched off he ripped his headset off, got out and was at her door before she’d even moved to remove her own headset.
She expected him to pull open her door and yank her out of the seat, but instead he seemed to check himself, waiting for her to be ready. Mason took a breath and released the handle, his hand waiting, hovering mid-air to help her disembark. She took it with some trepidation, hating that she knew he would notice her trembling fingers.
She stepped down onto the tarmac and looked up into his eyes, seeing nothing of their surroundings. She saw pain, pushed deep down, but she saw it. Pain, yearning, and so much else that matched what she was feeling in her own heart. She wanted to raise her hand to his cheek, to soften it all somehow, but he turned away, leading her off the helipad and towards a set of stone stairs.
As she followed him down the stairway, she looked up and stopped in her tracks. It was a fairy-tale castle, hewn from the rocks on which it sat, as if it had been formed by them, rather than perched on them. There were several layers of gardens, and pathways, decreasing in size, leading up to the main body of the castle. It reminded her of a sentinel looking out to sea, keeping a constant vigil against incursion from the ocean. It was simply incredible.
‘What is this?’ she asked, a surprisingly warm wind whipping her words back and forth.
‘The Summer Palace,’ he replied, paused, just as she was, on the steps, as if taking it in for the first time. But still his gaze refused to meet hers.
Danyl pushed onwards, and soon they were walking through the large entrance foyer, just a few staff waiting to greet them. Orders were issued, people disappeared, and he pulled her onwards through the large stately rooms she didn’t have time to really look at, and out onto a balcony area, if you could call the broad expanse she found herself on a balcony. He’d finally let her hand drop and it was only when she was bereft of it that she realised the warmth his touch had provided.
* * *
Danyl watched Mason walk over to the stone balcony overlooking the Arabian Sea. It was a sight that stole his breath, but it wasn’t the ocean he was looking at. The lights from the large state room behind them picked out the crystals on Mason’s dress, purple shimmers cascading down her back and legs every time she moved, each one striking him like lightning.
He’d known it would come to this. Somewhere, deep down, he’d known. Perhaps that was why he’d fought so hard against Mason coming to the gala in the first place. But, for his mother, he’d done everything he possibly could to get her there, and now she was here. Here. Where he’d wanted to bring her all those years ago.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said finally, turning to him.
‘Yes,’ he stated, not feeling the need to add anything further. Not yet anyway. ‘I wanted to bring you here to show you something.’
Confusion marred her delicate brow. But she, too, said nothing further. As if they each felt that words were too precious to waste.
He pulled his lips into what he hoped was an encouraging smile, rather than a grimace, and he held out his hand to hers. This time she would come of her own volition, he decided, refusing to drag her in his wake like a Neanderthal as he had done the moment they’d broken the kiss.
That kiss.
He’d had no control over himself. She had whipped up a spell that pulled him to her and he’d felt helpless to resist. And it was the first time in years that he’d felt peace. His hand stretched out between them, desperate to reform something of that connection, something of that peace. He would take what he could get right now, especially for where they were going.
Her hand, slightly cold in his, lay on his fingers, and he led her down the stairs at the end of the large balcony. He would have found their way to their destination, even without the small inbuilt solar-powered lights illuminating the path before them.
Over the years since they’d been in Manhattan he’d taken this route a thousand times. He’d never shared it with anyone else and only he had the key to the private garden. Not even his parents. It struck him now that they’d never asked him about it. It was his sanctuary, his privacy, and they’d allowed him that.
He led her to a circular wall of English-style red bricks, markedly different from the rest of the Moorish castle. Beside a small wooden door was an old stone bench, the seat and arms covered in a sweet-smelling herb.
Whether he was buying time before they entered the garden, Danyl wasn’t quite sure. All he knew was that he needed a moment to gather his thoughts. To get them to the conversation they needed to have.
He sat heavily on the soft green herb-covered stone seat, looking up at Mason.
‘Take a seat?’
‘I...’ She paused, as if sitting beside him was a fate she’d rather avoid. ‘I’ll ruin the dress,’ she said with a shrug of her delicate shoulder. He’d have thought it was an excuse, if he didn’t know her well enough that she would think of damaging the expensive dress.
He shrugged out of his tux jacket, laid it beside him over the moss-green living seat and gently tugged her down beside him. Next to each other, they each looked out over the rest of the gardens surrounding the summer palace.
* * *
Words escaped Mason. They flitted through her mind, back and forth, swept up in an emotional storm, failing to snag and catch, failing to land where she could bring them out into the open. She’d felt like this when she’d sought out the counsellor on the farm. She’d known that she needed to talk about it, to open up her grief, but the words had become clogged in her heart and chest. She’d tried so hard to stop blaming herself. That had been the work of the best part of two years. Wondering if she’d done something wrong, if the fall had caused it, if she’d caused the terrible loss of their child.
Consciously and practically, she knew that it was highly possible it had not been anything she’d done. Consciously. But her deepest fears would sometimes run free, waking her in the middle of the night—terrible pain and fear wracking her body with tremors—her body knowing enough to feel pain and loss, but her mind taking a second to catch up. To remember. And then would follow the avalanche of guilt—how could she have forgotten, how could she have to struggle to remember?—drenching her with ice-cold sweat and tears.
With each passing day, month and finally year, her grief had become a thread woven into her very being, the fabric of who she was. But it was a secret thread, invisible to the naked eye, known only to her...and to Danyl.
Unconsciously, her fingers picked at the skirts of the beautiful dress, and she almost started when she felt Danyl’s hands lie over hers to stop them. She stole a glance at his profile, looking out to the public gardens and the palace before them. His jaw was clenched as tightly as the knot in her stomach.
‘We need to...to talk about it. Because, Mason, I really can’t move on until we do. I’ve tried, I really have, but seeing you again...when you approached us in that club...’ The unspoken accusation lay heavily between them. Why did you do it? Why did you come back?
‘I had no choice,’ she said into the warm night air about them, shifting her hand in his. ‘We were going to lose the farm and you were the only people who might be insane enough to take a risk on a jockey who hadn’t ridden internationally in almost ten years. Especially with my reputation.’
‘A reputation that will now be cleared.’
Mason allowed herself to take that in. Even though it was unlikely that anyone would care, all these years later, she felt...vindicated. Harry would be cleared too. He’d struggled for a while after Rebel’s death, but through hard work and with head down he’d managed to rebuild his stables and reputation. But her? She’d hidden in the Hunter River Valley. She’d hidden from the world where she thought she’d be safe from prying eyes. But she hadn’t been safe from the past.
‘What will happen to Scott, do you think?’ she asked Danyl.
He drew in a breath. ‘I’ve passed the information on to the Racing Commission, who will probably look into it. The police may even want to investigate, though defamation is a civil matter, purposefully harming the horses... That could be criminal.’
Mason sighed, a little of the hurt leaving her chest. ‘I’d not really thought of it like that. I... I was...’
‘We weren’t the only ones who could have uncovered him. Just the first. And we were a little preoccupied at the time.’
‘But those first months...’
‘That is what I was talking about. We were...happy,’ he said, so sadly that it cut her to the quick.
‘We were naïve,’ she retorted, then regretted it. It had been an automatic response built from years of self-defence.
‘Do you really feel that way?’ Danyl asked, turning to her as if to try and read the truth from her.
‘In a way,’ she said, looking down at their hands, entwined. ‘Sometimes,’ she said, fighting the tears that rose unbidden to the backs of her eyes, ‘sometimes it doesn’t feel real. I remember the snatches of happiness, and think...we could never have been that happy. It couldn’t have really felt like that. Because how can a person live like that? Feeling that constant level of...? They’d explode, wouldn’t they?’ She turned to him. ‘And then I think that maybe it was like that. But only because it...’ She searched for the words. ‘It was like candyfloss. Impossibly sweet, so very delicate and ephemeral. It could never have lasted because there was nothing deeper, no solid layer beneath to support it.’
* * *
A wound Danyl thought had healed opened up in his chest. Not the one that covered his grief over their child, but the one that contained all the memories of his short time with Mason, the one where he’d buried his love for her, and cemented over the top. That same love was thrashing around in the bottom of the well, begging, shouting to be let out, crying to be heard.
‘Don’t do that,’ he said, hoping she didn’t hear the begging tone in his voice. ‘Don’t undermine what we had. You know it was more than that.’
‘Really? And how would I know that? We were children, Danyl. So young, and so naïve. As if to think that we could meet, fall in love and live happily ever after.’
Fury ripped through him as her words tore apart their past. ‘The only thing that stopped us was you leaving.’
‘How could I stay?’ she demanded, as angry as he felt. ‘Our grief—’
‘Our grief? Ours?’ he all but spat. ‘You held your grief as if it was your own. As if you were the only one who had the right to it. You left me and I couldn’t share my grief, or provide you with comfort. I couldn’t do anything.’
‘I left because it was too much!’ Danyl caught the silvery trail of tears tipping over her cheeks. ‘I couldn’t open up the way I felt, I couldn’t open up those gates, because I was afraid that once they were open I’d never be able to close them again.’
‘Perhaps they shouldn’t have to be closed.’
‘Closed or open, we couldn’t have stayed together bound solely by grief. Grief instead of love. We were so young. I had my career and you had—no, have a country.’
The same powerlessness he had felt all those years ago rushed over him, his thoughts, his skin, pulling at the hairs on his arms. He’d felt so lost. Supposedly able to protect a country, but not his child, and not the woman he loved.
‘We lost a child,’ Danyl said, turning to her, desperately wanting her to see, to feel what he was trying to say.
‘We didn’t lose him, Danyl.’ Her words held the ache of grief and hot anger. ‘He isn’t waiting somewhere for us to find him! He died, and there’s nothing we can do about it.’
‘Nothing...?’ he asked. ‘I don’t think that,’ he said, rising from the bench. His fingers reached to the chain he wore around his neck at all times—the chain that held the key to the gate in front of him. He pushed open the old wooden door, framed by winter roses, and held out his hand once more for her to take.
Mason wasn’t sure she wanted to see behind the door, but she knew that if she didn’t she’d always wonder. Always want to know. She placed trembling fingers in his palm and drew strength from the warmth of his skin.
She stepped into the large round garden and stopped.
Everything stopped.
Her breath, her heart... Tall eucalyptus trees stood proudly around the circular centre, the musty smell of mint and honey seeping into her pores and soothing the aches and hurts of her heart. Wild winter roses covered the stone walls, adding little bursts of colour to the tangle of greens and brick-red that met her.
In the centre of the garden stood a tall, head-height statue of a knight. The chess piece that had brought them together, that would have been the name of their little boy. The detail of the stone carving was so real, so lifelike. She walked towards it, her feet on a stone pathway that Danyl must have taken many times over the years. She reached up to the long face of the horse, her hands cupping its firm stone cheek as if it were alive. Her soft fingers grazed the roughly hewn stone, dancing over the details in wonder.
She took a sudden breath, an inward reflection of a sob, and greedily tasted the eucalyptus scent on her tongue. Eucalyptus and a large stone knight. Part him, part her.
‘We can remember him,’ Danyl said quietly. ‘We can honour him by talking about him. By loving him still. But not by ignoring our pain and letting our grief outweigh our love. I loved him. You loved him. And he’s here with us every day and to deny that, to make it dark and painful, undermines that.’
‘You did all this?’ she asked.
‘It was the first thing I did when I came back to Ter’harn from America. I needed to...have something with me, somewhere I could go to, to remember him. To remember you.’
It was a beautiful, magical place. Vines and winter roses grew around the worn stone knight. The sun’s first rays were just beginning to poke their fingers over the horizon, painting the small garden in beautiful soft yellows, the flowers just beginning to open under its touch. Perhaps Danyl was right. What if, in all this time, she’d only swallowed her grief, stifled her love? Her love for their child, and her love for him?
‘When did you get so wise?’ she asked, tentatively tasting the soft mockery on her tongue.
‘I’ve always been wise, Mason.’
She smiled softly at the return of his...no, not arrogance. Self-assurance. Wasn’t that what she’d first loved so much about him?
‘But you never gave me the chance to share this with you. You retreated. You left me.’
His softly spoken accusation hurt, knowing that it was more painful because he was right.
‘I couldn’t... I couldn’t open those gates, I couldn’t share my feelings, because I thought if I did, if I said them out loud, I’d never be able to stop. That the grief was so overwhelming, I thought it might never end. It was too much, too soon and too powerful,’ she finished, wondering if she was still talking about her grief, or had somehow begun to talk of her love for him.
‘He would have been beautiful,’ Mason said, looking up at the statue.
‘He was.’
‘But he should never have been the reason we were together.’
‘He wasn’t,’ Danyl said. ‘Not for me.’
The tears ran freely then, cascading from her cheeks, plunging into the dress and sparkling amongst the crystal beads. Each tear a regret, a sorrow, a hurt. Each one leaving her allowing her grief to morph into love, to recognise and embrace her feelings for their son. Danyl’s arms wrapped around her then, holding her while she cried. Doing the very thing she’d refused to allow herself all those years ago. To allow him to provide comfort, support and love... To find peace with the man who had once stolen her heart, the man who had now given it back to her.